I picked up a pretty small Sorby bowl gouge. Problem I'm having is there's not enough length on the steel protruding out of the handle to get my 1 3/4 inches out the front. Is there still a way to use the Varigrind to reproduce/hone the same angle that came on the tool?
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Sharpening short tools with Wolverine?
- Thread starter Joseph Bruno
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What I do to use the Ellsworth jig is to grind a flat on the top of the bar that is even with the tops of the flutes.
The Ellsworth jig will only slide as far as the end of the flute without this modification.
With the woulverine you need flat for the spring under the tightening bolt to rest against.
Flat will help with this as long as the handle is not yet hitting the jig.
The Ellsworth jig will only slide as far as the end of the flute without this modification.
With the woulverine you need flat for the spring under the tightening bolt to rest against.
Flat will help with this as long as the handle is not yet hitting the jig.
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I interpreted the question to mean that it is a small tool such as the Sorby micro tools. In that case, you could use a shorter protrusion through the Varigrind jig and then compensate by adjusting the leg angle or Wolverine arm position or both. It would be somewhat of a trial and error approach. Use a Sharpie to color the bevel and then just turn the grinding wheel by hand to see if the angle is correct.
john lucas
AAW Forum Expert
Grind it free hand. It's at the end of it ms life any way and it would be excellent practice.
You can go down to about 1-inch projection if you are satisfied with a short bevel. A long sidegrind will require a bit more projection. For practical purposes, if the bevel is kept short, there is no need to adjust the arm angle. Just use the V-arm adjustment to get the desired nose angle.
I briefly used a thick wooden "washer" with a hole in it the size of the tool (3/8" in my case) and an O.D. of near the jig diameter so I could slide the jig onto the ferrule a bit, with the washer supporting the tool in the front half of the tool. Took 5 hands to setup, and wasn't dead on, but the V arm adjusted for that. One could probably come up with a stepped "washer" for the front if you were motivated to make it easier on yourself.